Troubleshooting. It all happens too quickly!

It feels like my beginners luck is running out. I've made 8 or so very acceptable farmhouse cheddars and now moving into washed curd cheeses. Fresh raw milk warm from morning milking, home-made clabber culture, rennet - all same ratios and curd set times as FH cheddar. I understand my milk does process a bit faster than most recipes because it's so fresh and raw but something is still going wrong now. The first time went smoothly, I washed incrementally with 53C water and stirred the curd for half an hour up to 38C, squeeze test, drained, milled and salted it like a farmhouse cheddar, pressed, aged 6 weeks and it turned out great, absolute favorite cheese so far in the household!

The second one I brined instead of milled to experiment and when I opened it today it's just like a farmhouse cheddar 😕 Edible but sharp and less smooth and creamy than the first one. All that extra fiddling only to produce a very average cheese...

The last 2, including the one just opened and this mornings wheel, everything is just happening too fast with the curd. I'm trying to slowly raise the temperature while washing in increments but the curds are ready (taste and squeeze test) long before half an hour is up. Today it was only 15mins so I panicked, dumped the rest of the warm water in to quickly raise to temp, sat 5 mins and drained. In my panic to drain and press I forgot to mill and salt it so now I guess it's going to even further acidify in the press before brining it lol. When flipping it was so fluffy and spongy that I just know it's got lots of trapped whey. Im quite gutted.

Cheese masters please, what is happening here? Why is my curd acidifying so fast when I'm washing it, should I reduce the culture and shorten the time before rennet?